


The Breath We Took (When We First Met)

by Anonymous



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Lives, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Declarations Of Love, Devoted Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, F/M, Hehehe..., Inappropriate Use of the Force, Male Solo, Masturbation, Mild Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild Sexual Content, POV Ben Solo, POV Rey (Star Wars), Penis In Vagina Sex, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Protective Rey (Star Wars), Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey Needs A Hug (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:48:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29911659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: She only says it in the dream. It doesn’t count. Even if it’s more than once. Even if she wakes in the dark, curled on her side, mouthing forbidden things into a damp, thin pillow. Dreams aren’t real. It doesn’t mean anything.Five Times Ben and Rey say 'I love You' - For the Reylo Creatives Anniversary Exchange
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 36
Kudos: 96
Collections: Reylo Creatives: Anniversary Exchange 2021





	The Breath We Took (When We First Met)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TristenCrone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TristenCrone/gifts).



The first time he says it, it’s an accident. 

He’s sparring with the Knights and she’s there, unseen by all but him. She is trying not to watch and failing. He can feel her looking, stealthily following his form, studying every calculated maneuver, every shift of his weight. He lets it distract him and Kuruk takes advantage, flanking him with a savage lunge. 

Rey doesn’t move an inch but he feels the tiny jolt. Not a warning. A small, sharp note of alarm, quickly smothered. But he swerves like she’d called out to him. When he blocks the swing and pushes the Knight back a few steps, Rey turns her face away and fades a moment later, as if the Force is content with the outcome of this connection. 

He says it after, in his quarters, clinging to the feeling of her, that startled pitch when she had thought he might be hurt. He turns it over, rolls it around, expands it until it becomes every secret thing he’s afraid of. Until she’s standing up, glaring murderous, crossing the room to block Kuruk  _ for  _ him. By the time he’s finished, fist wrapped tight around his cock, leaning back on his heels so his chest and stomach take the brunt of it, he’s imagining her reaching down toward his face. 

He says it to the phantom of her, to his own desperate conjuring. 

“I love you.”

But Rey’s not there, no one is, so the words echo off cold walls and it’s hollow and shameful after. 

  
  


⸟✧⸞ 

She dreams of reaching out to him. Her fingers stop shaking when he leans to push his cheek into her open palm. He is so real; sweat-dampened skin, the hard point of his cheekbone, and the scar she wouldn’t take back, even in her sleep. 

When she wakes, she remembers the urgency of it. He’d been breathing hard, hot, rushing air along the thin skin of her inner wrist. The corner of his mouth had lain snug against the mound of her thumb. He was glassy-eyed, focused so completely on her face that Rey was sure he was telling her something, though she doesn’t know what it was. She had dropped to her knees, pressed against him, and his upper body had curled down around her. 

She only says it in the dream. It doesn’t count. Even if it’s more than once. Even if she wakes in the dark, curled on her side, mouthing forbidden things into a damp, thin pillow. 

Dreams aren’t real. It doesn’t mean anything. 

  
  


⸟✧⸞

  
  


The second time, he doesn’t say it at all. He’s just feeling it. 

Her hands jerk the controls when he reaches through the gap between the pilot seat and the bulkhead and places the tips of his fingers on her waist. It’s a small touch but he can’t help it, can’t pull his hand away. He needs to feel that she’s warm again, that her body moves on its own, that what he’d done had worked and she’s really here, boosting a battered X-Wing through a crackling atmosphere. By the time they reach Chiss space, they are holding the ship together with their combined Force energy and the touch is a necessary thing.

It happens when they land, when he takes his hand away. It’s not words. It’s just a swell of pure emotion, bubbling over at the physical lack of her, and he doesn’t have the energy to shield it.

Rey’s hand shoots up, palm slapped flat against the transparisteel roof.

“Ben,” she says, her voice is a breathy gasp, like she’s trying to drag in air around everything he’s shown her, lodged right there in the center of her chest. He leans further back into his seat, steadies himself. He can’t see her face and there are knuckles tapping on the side of the ship, impatient for Rey to open the cockpit, to join her friends. She closes off the Bond because FN2187 is there, watching with his head tilted to the side, frowning. Ben knows he can feel it, sure that an echo of what he’d sent to Rey had reached a man he’d run through with a saber in another life. 

He’s also certain he’s made a terrible mistake. 

  
  


⸟✧⸞

  
  


The first time she says it out loud, she’s standing in a packed command room and Ben is already halfway across the base, on his way to the brig. The Force-restraints they’ve used to tie his hands behind his back have dampened his presence and Rey is panicky, prickling with cold. 

“He saved me,” she glares at Finn, the only one who knows what happened with Snoke, “Again.”

Poe is unconvinced, even when Finn wavers, nodding reluctant confirmation. A vote is called, to gauge the best way forward. Rey stands stock-still, unbreathing, as the people she gave her life for slowly raise their hands, one by one. 

“He’s not a threat. Please,” she says, and she thinks of every time Plutt had failed to make her beg for portions, “Please, I love him.”

There’s uncomfortable shifting all around her, pitying looks, some amusement, and Rey wishes she hadn’t said it at all. Her admission has made no difference and Ben should have been the first to hear it. 

  
  


⸟✧⸞

  
  


The third time, it’s whispered through the bars of a jail cell and another man’s arms are around her. 

“No,” he tells her, before she’s even finished speaking, “If you do this, you’ll be hunted. By the First Order and by the Resistance. I won’t do that to you, Rey.” 

She already knows why, but Ben can’t stop himself. There might not be another chance. 

“I’m in love with you.” 

It’s all wrong, saying it like this, and he can’t look at her, “Go back to base.”

She tries to move toward him and FN2187 holds her back, wrapping both arms around her middle and refusing to budge when Rey tries to push him away. The fear is pulsing from him like he’s certain Ben will tear her apart if she gets too close. 

Rey shuts her eyes. Ben has a split second to realize what she’s doing before his cuffs snap open and drop to the floor. The Bond flares joyful. When the door slides back, Ben’s not sure which of them has done it. Security-breach protocols dim the lights and FN2187 has dropped his hold on Rey to peer out the window into the dim forest. 

The alarms are piercing, and Rey is holding out her hand, offering his mother’s saber as if he has any choice now. Clever girl. 

  
  


⸟✧⸞

  
  


By the time they reach Bakura, Rey is exhausted, despite Ben piloting for most of the trip. She sends a transmission to Finn and smiles at his response. 

>>>They’ll get over it. Be safe. We’ll see each other again. <<<

When she turns in her seat Ben is staring out at the Telaan Valley, mist-shrouded tree’s tinged purple by the setting sun.

“My mother loved it here,” he tells her, and reaches out to touch the back of her hand with two fingertips, showing her. Rey sees another planet, in memories that aren’t Ben’s. Shared memories of a planet just like this, now gone. She can feel the tremble beyond the images, the things he can’t let himself feel. “It reminded her of home.”

He says ‘home’ as if it’s his too, though she knows Alderaan was destroyed years before he was born. Rey has lived on one planet her whole life and has never felt the belonging in Ben’s memory. She stands before he can sense the deep well of what she’s missed. 

It’s only later, after a night sleeping in the cockpit and two nights timidly lying on a pallet in the middle of their bare cottage, that he admits he felt it anyway. 

“That belonging was my mother’s. She gave it to me and I kept it. I’ve never felt it for myself, until you.”

She has her back to him and his hand is on her clothed waist. The pad of his ring finger is rucking the material of her sleep-vest so there’s a sliver where their skin is touching. Everything else melts, and Rey can only feel that one tiny, roaring part of her body. 

Ben knows, see’s the way her knees shift over each other, senses how the Bond turns liquid and warm. But he doesn’t push, just rests his hand there until she rolls toward him to lie on her back. 

Now that it’s happening, Rey’s not afraid, though she’s been nervous since this morning, when they pushed their new bed into place and stood on either side of it, looking. She’d seen glimpses all day, snippets of his thoughts like a scent she couldn’t quite catch. Things he knew merged with things he couldn’t know, because he’d never seen those parts of her: His huge hand splayed across her bare ribs came as he made caf. His mouth pressing to the fading tan-lines on her hip as she stretched to dust the corners of their living room. A sharply-blocked image when she’d bent down to haul a crate from one room to another. That one had made her gasp and he’d cleared his throat apologetically, squeezing the back of his neck so hard his raised bicep strained the fabric of his shirt. 

“You don’t have to,” he says, now, in a bed he had snuck away to layer with Onderon silk sheets while she washed dishes. His whole palm flat is on her stomach. He hasn’t moved but her top is pushed up high. Rey thinks she might have done that herself when she turned over but even as she thinks it, she’s using the Force to nudge the material higher, so her breasts are exposed. 

“I want to.”

She says it less than ten minutes later, with his fingers sliding between her open legs and his mouth sucking gentle warmth around her nipple. It is the whispered crescendo to a shuddering moan and Ben says it back, immediate, like it had already been on the tip of his busy tongue.

He says it again when he’s pushing inside her, eyebrows drawn tight in concentration. Rey can’t respond, too focused on the pressure, fighting the urge to squirm. It hurts, a little, and he senses it and starts to pull away until her fingers grip tight to the back of his arms. When she nods at him, teeth sunk into her bottom lip, Ben shifts forward, slow but unrelenting, until he’s as far as he can go. 

It’s at the top of his held breath, muttered into her hair, kissed into her closed eyelids and then he’s moving and nothing hurts anymore and she’s whispering it back to him. His name and those words he’d never thought he’d hear again. Her hand is on the side of his face and there’s a tremble in his lip that she’s watching him press away. 

She is not dreaming and he’s not conjuring. It’s real now, in a small cottage at the edge of Wild Space, and better. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This was a lovely fic to write so thank you to the prompter! 😍
> 
> The title is taken from Harold Pinter's poem "It is Here"  
> I owe a wonderful writer thanks for beta but, as this is an anonymous exchange, I'll update this note once it's been revealed. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and (here's where I start begging) please do leave kudos or (even better) a comment because no-one irl talks to me anymore since I disappeared into the Reylo fandom. 😂😂😂


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